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Reel Life in the Tax Classroom: Learning Through Movies

By Ellen D. Cook, MS, CPA and Anita C. Hazelwood, MLS, RHIA, FAHIMA

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Tax Section

Editor: Annette Nellen, J.D., CPA

One of
the challenges in the tax classroom is to develop students’
ability to recognize when a tax issue exists as a result of
a situation/transaction so that the students can then
research an answer or planning opportunity and communicate
that idea. According to the AICPA Model Tax Curriculum, first
developed in 1996 and significantly revised in 2007, a
student completing the tax component of the body of
knowledge for entry into the accounting profession should
have the ability to:

Draw supportable
conclusions on tax issues by using research skills
(including accessing and interpreting sources of
authoritative support) to identify and evaluate strengths,
weaknesses, and opportunities; and

Communicate tax conclusions and recommendations in a
clear and concise manner to relevant stakeholders.

This column describes the Movie Project, a project
designed to be used in the first introductory tax class,
which accomplishes the learning outcomes described above
while engaging Generation Y’s digital interest and desire
for collaboration.

Movies and Television in the
Classroom

Simply put, movies and television provide
material that instructors can use to illustrate real
situations. Movies have been used for this purpose
extensively in higher education in psychology, criminal
justice, management, accounting, health information
management, ethics, and English classrooms. Entire websites
such as teachwithmovies.org, Allmovie.com, and Uk.imdb.com
are dedicated to providing supporting material, including
learning guides, lesson plans, and quizzes for hundreds of
movies for use at the K–12 level.

The Movie Project,
based on an idea presented at an American Taxation
Association Mid-Year Meeting teaching session, has been used
in various forms in alternating semesters over the past
several years to drive home the fact that tax issues affect
students as individual taxpayers every day in ways they may
not realize. Currently, students watch the movies away from
the classroom. However, an instructor may screen an entire
movie or snippets of movies to accomplish many of the same
objectives in an in-class activity. Federal copyright law
specifically exempts teachers at public schools or nonprofit
educational institutions who show lawfully purchased or
rented copies of a movie in classroom instruction (17 U.S.C.
§110(1)). The same exemption applies if the teacher wishes
to show snippets from a number of movies by using each movie
individually. However, it is illegal to circumvent
technological measures that effectively control access to
copyrighted works, such as digital locks, to make
compilations of scenes from various movies (17 U.S.C.
§1201(a)(1)(A)).

Specifics of the Project

To
begin the project, students are assigned to four-person
groups (experts disagree on the optimum size) with whom they
will work on this and other projects. While groups can be
formed in a number of ways (random, deck of cards,
self-selection, grade continuum), a heterogeneous group
(gender, ethnicity, academic performance, personality type)
appears to be most productive, especially when the groups
will work together over long periods of time or on complex
projects. In the author’s class, an abbreviated Myers-Briggs
test is administered to determine individual learning
styles. The results are used to form groups with an
appropriate mix of personality and learning styles.

In order to curb free riding, at the end of the semester
group members evaluate each other on a 10-point scale (the
10 points are part of the grading base). Anyone earning an
average rating of 50% or less gets none of the group grade.
Anyone earning more than 50% but not over 70% gets a
proportionate group grade, while all others get the total
points earned by the group. Charles Bonwell offers an
alternative system of accountability using a check-plus,
check, or check-minus system, with students having to
justify their ratings (Bonwell, “Using Active Learning as
Assessment in the Postsecondary Classroom,” 71 Clearing
House 73 (1997)).

Each group selects a
movie—either from the list provided by the professor or one
of their own choosing—that they view outside class. In
recent years, the author has not allowed deviation from the
list in order to avoid having to watch the 19 casualty loss
scenes from one previous group’s self-selection, Lethal
Weapon IV. The movies included on the list are rich
in tax issues: The Untouchables (tax evasion,
illegal income); It Could Happen to You (lottery
winnings, divorce issues, formation of business); Baby
Boom (formation of business, business use of home,
adoption); Indecent Proposal (classification of $1
million payment, charitable contribution, business
expenses); Maverick (gambling income, theft losses,
casualty losses); You’ve Got Mail (sale of
business/assets, formation of business, divorce); and
Pretty Woman (corporate takeover, trade or
business expenses, gift/compensation). In recent semesters
students have also selected Wall Street for more
complex issues (illegal income, corporate takeovers, fraud,
insider trading) and Soul Food for a wide variety
of family-oriented issues (gifts, inheritance, trade or
business, divorce, head of household).

The
groups are instructed to view the movie and prepare a
multisection report that includes the following (excerpted
from the course syllabus):

An introduction
that describes the project, the content of the paper, and
an overview of the movie.

A comprehensive
list of tax issues as they occur in the movie. (An
abbreviated list of tax issues in It Could Happen to You is provided in Exhibit 1.)

A narrative on the two main tax issues in which the
group must:

Discuss any choices the
taxpayer has concerning the issue. (For example, a
single taxpayer with a dependent child for whom he or
she is maintaining a home may file single or head of
household, but head of household is more
advantageous.)

Discuss requirements
for the specific action to be taken. (For example,
discuss the requirements of filing head of household,
citing specific Code and regulation sections.)

Discuss the effect of the item on the Form 1040
and accompanying schedules. (For example, the filing
status must be entered on the face of the Form 1040
and will affect the amount of the taxpayer’s standard
deduction taken on page 2 of the form.)

Discuss any other related items needing
explanation. Be sure to consider current tax law.

A conclusion: What was
learned from this project?

The final project is graded on three specific
criteria: (1) the identification of relevant issues; (2) the
technical coverage of the two issues identified (instructors
may wish to concentrate on only one issue or expand to three
or more issues); and (3) written communication skills,
including presentation, organization, clarity, punctuation,
and grammar. Students are given the grading rubric in
advance. They have access to RIA and CCH research products
and are directed to several award-winning websites to assist
them, including Identifying Tax Issues, Locating Tax Authority, Evaluating Tax Authority, and M.Tx. Writing Website.

Excerpts from recent projects are included in Exhibit 2. As evidenced by the
information in the exhibit, some groups go far beyond the
material covered in class to find obscure tax law or review
failed tax proposals.

Conclusion

The Movie
Project bridges the gap between “reels” and real life. It
accomplishes some of the key learning outcomes presented in
the Model Tax Curriculum while facilitating students’ need
for cooperative engagement. Various elements of the project
acknowledge and serve different learning styles, whether
students are the technically savvy, multitasking Generation
Y, Gen Xers, or their predecessors. Further, the project
allows instructors to explore a nonthreatening but rewarding
form of active learning.

In general, student
response to the project has been positive, with students
commenting that “digging for tax issues” was fun and that
they were able “to watch the movie from a different
perspective and apply what we have learned from Acct 420 to
the characters and their situations.” Although during the
project students were less enthusiastic about the tax
research element, later anecdotal feedback shows that they
appreciated the opportunity to develop their research
skills—skills that are much in demand in the workplace.

EditorNotes

Annette Nellen is a professor
in the Department of Accounting and Finance at San Jose
State University in San Jose, CA. Ellen Cook is assistant
vice president for academic affairs and professor of
accounting and Anita Hazelwood is professor of health
information management at the University of Louisiana in
Lafayette, LA. For more information about this column,
contact Prof. Cook at edcook@louisiana.edu.

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